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Exit polls suggest that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies may have an edge in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. In the 288-member Maharashtra assembly, 145 marks the majority, while 41 in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly.
Maharashtra and Jharkhand Election Results 2024: Counting of votes will begin at 8 am on Saturday. (Representative image/PTI)
The results of the Maharashtra and Jharkhand polls will be announced on Saturday, bringing down the curtain on the chock-a-block election year 2024. The results of polls held in 46 assembly constituencies and two parliamentary seats in 13 states will also be interesting. .
Exit polls suggest that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies may have an edge in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
In the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly, 145 marks the majority, while 41 in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly.
The result will affect the winter session of Parliament that begins on Monday, with the Narendra Modi government looking to push through 16 bills, including the controversial Waqf law amendment, and the opposition will raise a number of issues such as Manipur. riots, price hikes, and caste problems.
After a hard-fought victory in the April-June Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party regained momentum in October as it won the Haryana elections, where pollsters had predicted an easy victory for the opposition Congress.
Congress won a consolation victory in alliance with National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir where elections were held after a gap of 10 years.
The polls in Jharkhand were held in two phases, on November 13, then on November 20 along with Maharashtra, which voted in the first round.
Maharashtra
Elections in Maharashtra are a toss-up for the ruling Mahayuti alliance and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi bloc, with the past five years witnessing a significant political realignment in the state as regional behemoths Shiv Sena and NCP see a split.
The Eknath Shinde government’s Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, aimed at carving out women’s constituencies to strengthen the ruling alliance’s electoral prospects, is expected to be a key factor apart from issues like Maratha reservation, price hikes, employment, and BJP’s Hindutva push.
In the 2019 Maharashtra assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena (then undivided), won 161 out of 288 seats. However, the alliance collapsed due to power sharing, and the Sena joined forces with the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress to form the government.
However, in 2023, a rebellion by Eknath Shinde of the Sena, now the chief minister of Maharashtra, and Ajit Pawar of the NCP, who is now his deputy, forced CM Uddhav Thackeray to resign and his Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government collapsed.
During the April-June general elections this year, Narendra Modi became Prime Minister for the third time, the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra won only 17 out of 48 parliamentary seats, losing to the Maha Vikas Aghadi opposition, which includes the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and the NCP ( SP).
Jharkhand
The BJP and its allies are trying to wrest power from the JMM-Congress-RJD combine in tribal-dominated Jharkhand.
In the 2019 Assembly elections, chief minister Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, won 47 of the state’s 82 seats.
Earlier this year, Hemant Soren resigned as CM before being arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on corruption charges. He was briefly replaced by Champai Soren, a veteran politician and close aide of party patriarch Shibu Soren. But after Hemant returned to the CM’s seat after being released on bail, Champai rebelled and later quit joining the BJP.
The JMM tried to stoke Adivasi anger by pointing to the “unfair arrest” of Hemant Soren. The BJP, on the other hand, campaigned for the JMM-led government to allow “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh to settle in the state’s Santhal Pargana, a state. tribal dominated areas.
In the April-June Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won eight seats in the state with 44.6% of the vote, and its ally AJSU won one seat with 2.62%. The combined INDIA bloc won only five seats-three by JMM and two by Congress, with a vote share of 14.6% and 19.19%.
